Advise from STW please.

Looking to purchase a property. The house and next door have ground level garages that are millimeters apart. Next door has extended above the garage but with huge eaves that now overhang the boundry and would prevent building on top of the garage next to it.
If we bought we would have no intention of extending up as the house already has a ground floor extension into the garden.

Both extensions have been in place over 30 years. Just wondering what the potential issues could be, apart from the obvious. Does it devalue the house? etc.

Does it devalue the house? Well, you tell us, you’re buying it.

If we bought we would have no intention of extending up as the house already has a ground floor extension into the garden.

Can’t really see a problem then!!

You’d own part of their house.
HTH
IANAL

Treat the eaves as if they are trees, cut everything extending over the boundary and then hand pieces to neighbour. 😉

That is pretty bonkers though. You’d need a solicitor/surveyor to review that and check the legality surely?

Was the extension done before or after the current owners moved in?

After 30 years, nothing you can do I suspect.

Would make it harder to sell on as future owners can’t extend.

High potential that you are going to be a pain in the arse to live next to.

It’ll be a party wall issue although they are not attached. Will it devalue, no, probably not. I suspect you’d never be able to build a similar extension as you’d need to attach to it on a non attached house – not going to happen!

Will it put off potential buyers? Yes – just look at you now!

It may not affect future extension plans. There are a couple of house on my street that have similar extensions. Now the local council will not grant planning permission for such, and you’re not allowed to go any closer than 1m to the boundary.

I’m doing an over garage extension and we had to design to retain a gap of 1m to the edge of the garage which is the party line. So even if next door did overhang us, we wouldn’t touch or form a 1st floor party wall.

My council does this because they don’t want a street of semis, that are attached already to the non-semi neighbour, turning into a terraced street because of over-garage extensions.

Are there many more areas of your life where other peoples actions may impinge on your ability to do the things you’ve got absolutely no intention of doing? Or is this a one off?

It’ll be a party wall issue although they are not attached.

Surely not if it is outside London and built before the Party Wall etc Act 1996 came into force?

Wow, ok i was expecting the replies to be slightly more helpful than “your buying it arent you” and “you must be a sh** neighbour” but hey ho.

Yes i am thinking of buying it (at a price that reflects the potential issues) I was hoping to get some insight into the legal position or planning laws, that i currently know little about.

Wow, ok i was expecting the replies to be slightly more helpful than “your buying it arent you” and “you must be a sh** neighbour” but hey ho.

never overestimate the STW

Our neighbours house (probably, you’d need a plumb line to check) overhangs our garage. But there’s only a 1ft or so soak away (I presume, it’s filled with gravel) between the houses which I’ve no idea who owns as it’s on our side at the front (his house extends to become the boundary wall), but at the back his fence attaches to our garage.

We’re already a 4 bed house though, so extending sideways is probably never going to happen. And even if it did, at most we’d just be building en-suites and wardrobes so going upto the boundary wouldn’t be an issue because we wouldn’t need to.

So it depends on the house, if it’s a 2 bed in a street of 4 bed houses, then yes it might be an issue with future buyers. If it’s a 4 bed in a street of 3 beds, then no one probably want’s it extending to a 5 bed.

Hmmmm… tricky. I would hope your solicitor would be able to tell you exactly what the situation is. We bought a semi where the plans don’t quite match the reality, it’s not ever likely to be an issue though. Might try to get the site resurveyed at some point but not bothered much.

If the garages are only millimetres apart then I guess the two roof’s would need to be connected in some way anyway. Maybe talk to them about your plans for your extension and suggest that it would require some modification to their eve’s and if they are going to be awkward about it then you might have a problem, if not then I can’t see how it is a problem.

My inlaws have two adjoining garages dethatched from the houses that share a roof. At the time it was cheaper to build the two garages rather than two separate ones.

Thisisnotaspoon, good point that i hadnt thought of yet. The house we are looking at is already a 4 bed, albeit with one of those rooms downstairs. The street was originally 3 bed houses, but aprox half are now extended to 4 bed.

Just to clarify, these houses are in the corner of a cul de sac, so next doors house is at 45 degrees to the other. The corner of their extension is aprox half way along “our” garage. If that makes sense.

So they are not end to end as you might have thought.

Check with your lawyer but personally unless I really really wanted that house I would walk away

i wouldn’t buy it personally…it would annoy me and i’d have an irrational dislike for my neighbours before i’d even moved in.

Look up Flying Freehold

APF

Be objective, assuming you can do nothing about it, how good is the rest of the property, and do you really like it compared to the competition apart from that? if it’s good, use it as a bargaining tool to knock the asking price down a bit.